Maggie's Farm

Readers know that I have a special attachment to Wellfleet on Cape Cod. I was a little kid in Hyannis when it was a sleepy village without malls, car dealerships, and retirement complexes, but my family soon fled up to Wellfleet for the summers.

By no means do we wish to encourage anyone to buy there, but most of the town is Cape Cod National Seashore so construction opportunities are limited. And the water, especially on the ocean side, is too darn cold for almost anybody except native New Englanders and kids.

Besides, as the old joke goes: "Cape Cod Real Estate - going fast." That's because Cape Cod erodes at the average rate of about 3'/year on the ocean side. Thoreau was impressed by that fact. Over the years, we have seen many nice oceanfront cottages disappear over the winter.

Wellfleet is not a fancy town (it's a glitz-free zone) and its waters produce the best oysters in the world. Wiki tells us: "Wellfleet was encountered by Europeans as early as 1606, when the French explorer Samuel de Champlain explored and named it "Port Aux Huitres" (Oyster Port) for the bountiful oyster population resident to the area."

I thought our readers might be amused by this piece of Wellfleet real estate, for sale now.

They are asking $1.8 million for that waterfront villa. It's probably the location on the harbor shore, not the structure - if you can call it that a structure.

For something with a little more charm, but no waterfront, this is my idea of a real Cape Cod house:

They are asking $3.625 million for this place. If you do the math, though (lot size 435600 at rule-of-thumb 44,000 sq ft/acre, that's a ten acre place. A solid foothold on the Cape. Worth every darn penny).